Acknowledgments

I dedicate this book to my wife, Jane Bloom, who, for the past five years, has been not only my special partner in life but my personal editor. She read the entire book in early draft form and helped improve the quality of my manuscript through her many recommendations, from changes in words and wording to more substantive changes in terms of issues and ideas.

My children, Scott and Heather, have contributed so much to this book. They read the manuscript, offered their own thoughtful comments and helped in so many other ways as well. My stepdaughters, Ona, Beryl, and Rachel, were especially helpful in providing tech support for an avowed Luddite. I am also grateful to their spouses and special others (Julie, Steve, Glenn, Jim, and Milan). While I have been writing this book, I have had fruitful—sometimes spirited but always friendly—exchanges of ideas with them related to the Obama presidency and the current state of American politics.

I also want to thank Valerie Achilles, my undergraduate summer intern in 2018 and now a graduate of Columbia Law School, who was of great assistance to me in researching newspapers and other primary printed sources, and my editor at Cornell University Press, Michael McGandy, who has been highly supportive and patient while I was writing this book and helped improve its quality substantially. Similarly, the two outside readers for the manuscript offered helpful suggestions for changes that are reflected throughout the volume. One of the readers has remained anonymous. The other, John Robert Green of Cazenovia College, a highly respected historian of recent American history, who has written numerous books on American politics and politicians, provided a chapter-by-chapter, paragraph-by-paragraph, line-by-line list of recommendations for change. I have incorporated many of his suggestions into the book.

Finally I acknowledge the assistance of such scholars and friends as Martin Quitt, emeritus dean and professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Boston; Jacob Kipp, former professor of history at Kansas State University and now adjunct professor of history at the University of Kansas’s Center for Russian, East European, and European Studies; Burton Melnick, retired head of the English Department at the International School in Geneva, Switzerland; and Donald Marks, retired historian and technology genius. Burt and Jake, in particular, read early draft chapters of the book and made extremely useful suggestions for improvement. I have known all of these scholars and friends for at least fifty years, some for more than sixty years. I want to thank them and the others I have mentioned for the great influence they have had on my scholarship and on my life.